If not for the colorful crayon drawings all over the walls, you might be more apt to think you were at Kirkwood Community College when walking through the halls at Kirkwood Elementary.

Pennants from universities across the U.S. line the walls. College promotional material hangs on clotheslines in some classrooms. The words "Class of 2030" are boldly posted next to kindergarten classroom doors.

The decor, like much of what students do at the campus, is targeted at preparing these kids for university life or, say administrators, a career after graduation. It’s part of a districtwide push to get students thinking about what they want to do after high school — and what they need to do to get there — at an earlier age.

The first elementary AVID in Iowa

Kirkwood Elementary is at the center of it all. It’s the first elementary school in the state to have the college prep program called Advancement Via Individual Determination, or AVID.

The nationwide nonprofit typically focuses on students who will be the first in their family to attend a university. It exposes students and their families to skills that will help them with university life and provides information on things like scholarships and college entrance exams.

A handful of districts in Iowa had AVID programs before Iowa City Community School District, but their programs take the form of elective courses at the secondary level. When administrators began looking into bringing AVID to Iowa City, they decided to start at the elementary level and work their way up.

Like the secondary programs, AVID elementary programs keep the same focus on goal-setting but will pare down the details, said Shannon Bailey, a program manager with AVID. Instead of talking to families about the ACT, she said, teachers work more on fundamental skills like organization. Elementary teachers are coached on AVID's teaching strategies, and the campus in general amps up the "college readiness culture."

The program began as a pilot at Kirkwood last year. This year, Weber Elementary and Northwest Junior High were brought into the fold. Next year, the district wants to start pilots at Alexander Elementary and Grant Wood Elementary.

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Third-grade students do reading rotation at Kirkwood Elementary, the site of the first AVID elementary program in the state.(Photo: Aimee Breaux / Press-Citizen)

Jen Bertrand, a second-grade teacher at Alexander, toured Kirkwood on Wednesday to get a feel for the program and take notes on ways to improve her own classroom. On first impression, the teaching strategies showcased things like goal-setting and collaboration that she tries to incorporate into her class.

In the last few years, she says she's seen Alexander adopt a similar atmosphere as the Kirkwood Elementary campus. Students are referred to as scholars. Teachers talk about universities and careers.

“Within the last three years, I’ve noticed a shift in that mindset for kids, so they are thinking about those things at a younger age,” she said. “It’s something that was common in middle school and high school, but not so much with younger kids. It’s good to see.”

Getting kids to visualize what they can do one day is an essential part of the AVID program. On white sheets of paper posted on Kirkwood lockers, kids have spelled out what they want to do when they go to college — "Army," "computer programmer" and "artist" are among the answers. Various mirrors hanging near the entrance of the school have words like “scholar” and "future writer" posted under them.

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Decorations in Kirkwood Elementary hallways are designed to get students thinking about graduation and what they can do when they grow up.(Photo: Aimee Breaux / Press-Citizen)

Sixth-graders Takia Green and Sariyah Johnson said they've talked a lot about attending a university throughout their elementary school career. Green wants to be a nurse or a lawyer but doesn’t have her sights on a school. Johnson wants to be a singer; she doesn’t know which university she’s going to, but she knows where it will be located.

“I want to go to a California college,” Johnson said. “I feel like it will be fun and I could learn more.”

Across the school, second-grader Lydia Dunvo says she doesn’t want to go to a university. She said she wants to be a ballerina, but it's a bit of a point of contention at home.

“But my mom wants me to be a doctor,” she said.

Either way, Bailey, says she wants students like Lydia to be prepared.

“We’re talking to kids about college pretty early on because we know that if students have that conversation, it becomes more real to them,” she said. “And they make choices on the path, beginning very early on ... so that when they graduate high school, if they choose to go to college, they have set themselves up for success. If they chose not to go to college they have set themselves up for career and life.”

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Kindergartner Amelia Green-Erving walks Kirkwood principal Anita Gerling through an AVID binder and how goals work in her class.(Photo: Aimee Breaux / Press-Citizen)

'All of their life is in that binder'

In the nearly two years the program has been at Kirkwood, Principal Anita Gerling said the school has already seen some anecdotal evidence that the program is helping students. She adds that work is being done to compile statistical data to that effect as well.

Maybe the most tangible example comes in the form of binders students at Kirkwood lug around. The binders compile all of their school work. As Renee Person, instructional design strategist, explains it, “all of their life is in that binder.”

“That’s one tiny little piece of what makes a college-ready student. ... Our kids aren’t coming to school with a lot those skills, so its simply an organizational structure that gives them that from a very early stage,” she said. “So kids think ‘Oh yeah, it’s important that I keep my stuff organized and I know where everything is.'”

It's not a very flashy change to campus, but Gerling lit up explaining to teachers from Alexander examples of those binders having an impact.

Once last year, she said, a student wasn't picked up from school, but the kid knew on his own where to find his home phone number in his binder. Another time, an astonished mother told her that her fifth-grade son who “tornadoes through” their home has been able to find his homework every day since he started using the binder.

“Up through fourth grade, he had just been one of those messy kids,” she said.

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Decorations in Kirkwood Elementary hallways are designed to get students thinking about graduation and what they can do when they grow up.(Photo: Aimee Breaux / Press-Citizen)

Kindergartner Amelia Green-Erving can clearly explain how goal setting works flipping through one of the binders with her principal, including the prize her teacher gives her for completing a goal.

“For all of our work and stuff we do, we get smelly stickers,” she said.

Person said there’s a kind of empowerment that comes with the smelly stickers.

“A lot of things are done to our kids, and they become helpless in that and they expect it to be done for them,” Person. “So it empowers them to really be in control of their own life.”

The flip side of that, she says, is that educators can't really control students.

“I can’t make our little kindergartner go and meet our goal. That’s her goal, that’s her learning," she said. "We’re transitioning that power of learning to the kids at a very young age. They are responsible for the gains that they make — and the celebration belongs to them.”

Aimee Breaux is the education reporter for the Press-Citizen. Reach her at abreaux@press-citizen.com and follow her on Twitter @aimee_breaux.